We Read Science Fiction

Aliens with scientific proof that God exists? What’s the catch? Calculating God by Robert J Sawyer is a novel set in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Royal Ontario Museum. That alone makes it cool in my books, so all you Americans can take this review with a grain of salt. I’ve been to the ROM, and now I want to go again. Nostalgia aside however, the premise of the novel was very compelling none the less. It’s a great read even for people who are less than enthusiastic about Science Fiction.

Summary: A very interesting story and premise, and some great character development. Rarely preachy given the content and theme, it made me rethink more than a few of my own beliefs.

The idea is simple: Two different races of Aliens arrive with evidence that the five major extinction events on Earth exactly coincide with extinction events on their home worlds. This leads to the debate that these events were created and engineered by an intelligent designer to force intelligence and sentience to emerge simultaneously on all three worlds.

Where it goes from there is a good ride, and certainly one of fiction, but this is the most plausible “intelligent design” argument I could ever see myself even considering.

NOTE: I seriously doubt Sawyer believes in Intelligent Design in any way, but this is a good “scientific” consideration of one version of it.